fish turning white

Question
Hello,

This afternoon I noticed our parrot Chilid (orange) fish that his body is turning white.  He is in an 18 gallon freshwater tank along with an algae eater.  We have also noticed in the past week that he is for lack of better words digging a hole in the fish tank.   He is taking the rocks on the bottom of the tank and stacking them along the sides of the tank.  One thing to note not sure if you need to know this. This past Saturday our air conditioner unit for the house went out.  We since have purchased a new one and getting our house cool again.  The tempatures in our area have been ranging from 100 to 107 it has been very hotttttttt.  We have been making sure to check the tempature reading on the fish tank while we have been dealing with the AC problem and the reading has ranged from 84 to 87 today it is at 85.  I know nothing about fish so I apologize if I sound like a dum dum.  We have had this fish close to 2 years now and would hate for anything to happen to it.  Thanks for your help.

Answer
White sounds like a ph problem (if the fins are fraying as well). Do you test the water quality? Moving the rocks doesn't worry me. Fish do erratic things like that. I would test the water quality (specifically ph, ammonia, nitrates or nitrites).
And don't worry about sounding foolish. There is no such thing as a stupid question.